CRM - August 2008 - (Page BP3)

Sponsored Content August 2008 3 RIBBIT FOR SALESFORCE: Integrating Voice into Vertical CRM Workflow CRM solutions have become the backbone of business process for sales professionals in all sectors and, increasingly, in vertical markets. Although CRM tools continue to evolve, the requirement for sales professionals to spend time face-to-face with customers is increasingly critical across industries and significantly in real estate, financial services, health care, high tech media sales, and other relationship-intensive sales interactions. Despite the rise of mobile email and emerging data applications for the cell phone, there remains a fundamental productivity gap between the tools of business mobility and CRM processes and information flow. Keeping CRM accounts current is often a challenge to sales professionals who spend much of their time traveling and meeting with customers. A “divide” between the requirement for customer responsiveness and ongoing management of CRM accounts is an oftencited point of frustration for sales managers and salespeople alike. While in the field, there’s seldom time to log in to a laptop to update CRM accounts or type meeting notes. Even responsiveness to inbound sales requests and voicemails routinely falters as sales professionals spend time in meetings at client sites. Customer satisfaction, team communications and business success often suffer as a result. Ribbit for Salesforce is the first integrated voice application linking mobile voice communications and speech-to-text capabilities with CRM processes. It bridges the divide by enabling customers to use regular calls from their cell phone to update CRM accounts and even to initiate activity-based workflow tailored to their custom vertical applications. PRODUCT SUMMARY Ribbit for Salesforce allows salesforce.com users to keep account information current, even when away from the keyboard, by integrating voice messages into salesforce workflow through voice messages sent from mobile phones. Since the majority of sales professionals spend large amounts of time moving between customer locations, an application that turns travel time into productivity time offers a tremendous opportunity to increase the value of each workday and to create efficiencies in account management, record-keeping, and management of customer relationships. Whether sales professionals are traveling short distances to see clients or covering large territories, Ribbit’s solution allows them to use what was once “down time” to actually enhance their productivity. With Ribbit, sales professionals can update their salesforce.com accounts any time, simply by leaving a voice memo from their phone. The ability to talk, rather than type updates to salesforce allows sales professionals to add notes, details and todo items to their customer records without having to “get back to the keyboard,” simply by calling these updates in from their mobile phone. Furthermore, Ribbit for Salesforce allows any incoming call—whether left by a sales professional or by a customer, team members, or supplier—to be directed to salesforce accounts, allowing information related to sales activity to be centralized, stored and managed in a single location. Since the application allows for voice-totext transcription of sales data, messages that originate as voice can be shared, forwarded, stored and searched as needed, increasing the accuracy and utility of salesrelated messages. Ribbit also creates an always-ready online “clone” of a salesperson’s mobile phone within their salesforce account, allowing incoming calls to be managed through salesforce, with messages taken or directed according to the user’s changing preferences. For example, a user could direct Ribbit to receive calls through this clone while they participated in a meeting, and have the application transcribe the call to text and direct it as an SMS to their mobile phone. This would allow them to stay current on incoming messages, replying and forwarding as needed, without having to interrupt the flow of the meeting. Because this salesforce-based “phone” operates through the Internet, it is available through any Internet connection, even when the associated phone is not working or out of cell phone range. This “always on” functionality increases the salesperson’s responsiveness to customer needs and provides multiple modes of contact and access, independent of location and signal availability. The application works from any U.S.based mobile phone, so there is no need for the salesforce.com user to make any changes to their phone, or to their http://salesforce.com http://salesforce.com http://salesforce.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - August 2008

CRM - August 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Maximum Security A Code Win Doesn’t Blow Forming the Platform CRM on Twitter CRM Class Is in Session Making CRM Mandatory for University Administration Required Reading Cover Story: Calling it Quits Wouldja Look at That? 8 Enterprise Strategies That Stick CRM Searches for Search All Lines Are Not Busy UC: As Easy as A-B-C Even Contact Centers Have Room for Improvement Money Lying Around? Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - August 2008

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